By Scott Gilfoid: In a little over two weeks from now, #6 WBC heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua (12-0, 12 KOs) will be putting his unbeaten record on the line against the toughest test of his two-year pro career against former heavyweight world title challenger Kevin Johnson (29-6-1, 14 KOs) on May 30th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
There’s a very real chance that the lumbering 6’6” Joshua may be extended for the first time in his career due to the strong chin and superb defensive skills of the 35-year-old Johnson. However, Sky Sports commentator Jamie Moore thinks that Joshua, 25, is going to have an easy time slicking through Johnson in this fight.
In fact, Moore sees Joshua scoring a knockout in 4 or 5 rounds. If Moore is correct, he’d be doing something that the likes of Vitali Klitschko, Dereck Chisora, Tyson Fury, Tor Hammer, Albert Sosnowski and Christian Hammer were unable to accomplish. Of course, they didn’t fight Johnson when he was 35-years-old, so there’s always a chance that Joshua can get a stoppage just based on Johnson being an old guy now and not the fighter that fought Vitali Klitschko in 2009.
“I can see Joshua doing a better job on Johnson than anyone else before him and making quite a statement. I think he will get him out of there in four or five rounds,” Moore said via Skysports.com.
I don’t see Joshua being able to score a quick knockout or a knockout at all against Johnson, because the American is too good defensively, and he’s got too good of a chin. Joshua’s punches are easy to see coming, and you can pick them off. Yeah, Joshua has knocked out all 12 of his opponents, but he’s facing such awful opposition right now that it doesn’t mean anything.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is being ever so careful in the guys that he puts in with Joshua right now. Hearn seems to be targeting mostly old guys or fighters that are just so incredibly inept that they don’t stand a chance at all.
With Joshua’s last opponent Raphael Zumbano Love, he looked like someone stunned him with a shot to the head before he went out into the ring. Love did absolutely nothing in the ring other than throwing a couple of pawing punches.
All Joshua did was throw a telegraphed right hand that landed to the head of Love in the 2nd round, sending him down on the canvas for a knockout. Love was standing square to Joshua at the time with both hands by his sides. Instead of the crowd getting excited by the knockout, many of them seemed disappointed at the non-competitive nature of the fight.
There wasn’t a lot of cheering as you would think there would be because it was such a nothing fight. Unfortunately, guys like Love have been the norm for Joshua since he turned pro, as Hearn hasn’t seemed interested in putting Joshua in with guys that could potentially hurt him or give him a competitive fight. For this reason I think we’re going to see a much different fight on May 30th than we have in Joshua’s other fights.
“I think Kevin Johnson is a very good fighter, but I just think he looks a little small to me,” Moore said. “I just think anybody who is giving away such height and reach disadvantages to somebody like Anthony Joshua is not going to stand much of a chance.”
Johnson says he’s seen a weakness in Joshua’s fighting style that he feels he can exploit. It could be that he’s noticed that Joshua is easy to hit, especially with the way he stands square to his opponents and starts landing arm punches when he thinks he has his opponents hurt. He’s very amateurish and slow, and he lacks the explosiveness that you like to see with top heavyweights.
Some boxing fans compare Joshua to Frank Bruno. I see him more as similar to Primo Canera, a big 6′ 5½″ who fought in the 30s and 40s. Like Joshua, Canera was slow and heavily muscled, and lacked the explosiveness with his punches. He looked like a body builder rather than a fighter, and he struggled badly when he stepped it up a level against good heavyweights like Max Baer.
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